Keep up resistance, Iran tells Hamas

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday told the visiting political supremo of Hamas to keep up the resistance against Israel, warning that abandoning the struggle would lead to disgrace.

The meeting between Khamanei and Khaled Meshaal came a week after Syria and Israel announced they had resumed indirect peace negotiations through Turkish mediators, after an eight-year freeze.

"It is evident today that the Zionist regime is at its lowest ebb and is unable to resist the patient Palestinian people," Khamenei was quoted by state radio as telling the Syria-based Meshaal.

"Thank God the Palestinian people have stood like a mountain despite the disaster. The only way to the liberation of Palestine is to resist faithfully.

"The ones who choose a path that is not one of resistance will pay a price and be disgraced in the eyes of God," he added.

Iran, which does not recognize Israel, is one of the militant Palestinian group's main cheerleaders in the region. However Tehran denies it provides Hamas with arms or military training.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that he remained confident that Syria -- Iran's closest regional ally -- will keep up the struggle against Israel despite its announcement of renewed peace negotiations.

Ahmadinejad has provoked outrage with his frequent verbal tirades against the Jewish state, which he has likened to a "stinking corpse" and predicted is doomed to disappear.